Though no one in the government is questioning Estonia’s electronic voting process, efforts needed to be made to make it safer. Also, the early voting period should be shortened, the chairmen of the three coalition parties said.

As ERR’s radio news reported, two years ago following the last Riigikogu elections, the Center Party’s council announced that Estonia’s e-elections represented a security risk rather than a success story, and that they should be abolished for their lack of fairness and transparency.

Now the coalition’s leading party, Center does not pursue such a course. The only concession is that the government would discuss making the electronic voting process safer.

Prime minister and Center Party chairman Jüri Ratas insists that he himself never made such negative claims about Estonia’s e-election. “Jüri Ratas has never said that the e-elections are a security risk, and hasn’t said that they are dangerous either. But what we have said as a party is that they need to be made safer and more transparent,” Ratas said.

The prime minister added that this was also the intent of Center’s coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SDE) and the Pro Patria and Res Publica Union (IRL).

IRL chairman and defense minister Margus Tsahkna confirmed that the country would hold on to its electronic vote. “People can rest assured that the e-elections will remain. We need to review them to make them safer, and one topic we’ve discussed is the long period of the early voting,” Tsahkna said.

According to SDE chairman and minister of health and labor Jevgeni Ossinovski, the past has shown how parties run one campaign during early voting, and a very different one once the e-polls close. “The campaigns tend to turn cheap and very primitive, as they address different voter groups,” Ossinovski said, adding that this wasn’t right.